Discovering the religion of ink and the importance of 2 wings.

I was 18 when I got my first tattoo, I wanted a phoenix, so I got one. It was the beginning of a healing that will probably be a lifelong work in progress. The asshole I was with at the time hated the idea, it was against his religion. As was sex, drugs and rock and roll, more or less, I was against his religion. The tongue ring I got earlier in that relationship, while he made fun of my slurred speech the first few weeks, he thoroughly approved of, but the tattoo was sure to cause a fight. By this time in the relationship I knew it would be ending soon and maybe this was my way to celebrate the best decision of my life, maybe I was just looking to start the end with a clear message. I guess it really doesn't matter but to this day it is one of my favorites. I picked it out of a book of flash and asked the artist to make a few changes, a good friend was with me and I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd seen friends get tattoos and watched my father get work done. I remember sitting in the chair hearing the buzz as it was about to begin and focusing on the Alice Cooper poster. I sat as still as I possibly could and focused on the poster, a few times I know I thought about how pissed the asshole was going to be and cracked a smile. I remember thinking I'm gonna be ok and breathing more calmly and freely than I had in months before that piece in time and at one point I remember the artist asking me if I was breathing. I just laughed and said yes. I had never felt as free and sure of myself and relaxed as I did that day, in that chair, knowing I was going my own way. Among the many things the asshole had told me I would never do a tattoo had been one of my earliest concessions. My tattoos since then each have stories of their own, I've got alot of eyes watching over me and plenty of thoughts for the empty spaces but that one is the closest to my heart.

I am learning to expect less of people I love who haven't lived my life. I am learning slowly that everyone believes they understand and while some people do, most don't. You cannot fully explain to anyone who hasn't lived it what it is like to wake up with someone licking your face, holding you down with his dick inside you. I mean clearly, I've just described it but that doesn't mean you know or understand what its like to crawl back inside yourself and watch this happen to you from some outside level of existance. You may have an idea what its like to pretend your asleep but I have my doubts that the majority of people know the thoughts that go through someones head while they allow someone to do this while they simply lie there and play dead so to minimize the other persons enjoyment and keep from having to open their eyes to the reality of that nightly nightmare. While there are plenty of people who can relate and plenty of people who do actually understand, they are not concentrated to only eachother, they don't flock solely to eachother and even when they do they rarely break out the skeletons that feed their sadness.

The worst things that have happened to us make us the strongest and teach us the most and what that time in my life continues to teach me is that I am stronger than the worst things to come my way. I will always come back stronger from the things that hurt the most and it's that knowledge that means the difference between laying down and getting back up. I've had a broken wing and maybe thats part of why I don't fly straight but every break must heal. The people in my life who need justifications and continual explanations of my feelings and actions this long after the fact. These are the same people who look in the mirror too long and still can't see themselves. These are the same people who say I understand, but..., and these are the people I can't keep fighting to keep in my life simply because I love them. When I open my closet and count my skeletons I am the one who has the memories flood back and anyone who wants to step inside my head and dig around my closet had better be ready to see the grass burning. No two people honestly have the same vision of what hell is, for me, it was a long time ago and I'm not goin back. I will never respect any group, religion person or idea that could send another person home to tell the person they "love" that they are going to hell for having sex and then rape them 6 hours later on a regular basis. I can respect myself enough not to keep company with people I don't respect and I can love myself enough to not continue to give people power they don't deserve. I may not respect those people who I feel had a chance to help but I don't hate them, I more or less feel sad that they believe they were helping while they were actually fueling the actions of a sociopath.

There has been a shift over the last few years in my outlook on my past and I really have no desire to continue dredging the waters just to bring up more pain. There is a place where you realize now is far more pertinent than then. Some asshole told me once I'd never go to college, drive trucks, go to broadcasting school, drink, be with a girl, get a tattoo, see my Goddaughter and a few other things. I have no idea what that piece of shit is doing right now, but I do know in ten years I've done all the things he said I wouldn't except one and I'm pretty sure the naked lady on my leg and I get to be proud of that. No apologies, no regrets.

What about the children?

Over the years I've been asked countless times by new friends and even a few strangers if my parents are still together. With the places and adventures I've had, a good amount of these people were truckers and southerners amazed at the idea of a biracial couple surviving the daily criticism and social taboo of race mixing. Here in the northeast, now in 2012, it is fairly commonplace. We don't think about it, we don't dwell on it, it is what it is. We tend to take for granted the idea that people of a different color can and do flock together, make lives, car payments, cake, babies, love, together. By choice, by ignorance, by accident, we forget that the urge to share and partner and copulate with someone other than ourselves is as natural as our skin or the sex parts we happen to be born with. We go about our daily lives thinking our struggle is so much harder than those that came before us. We live blind to the experiences that put the person next to us wherever we may be. We don't ask eachother to share our life stories by a fireside and we don't really want to know. Unless you're like me and you do, sometimes, and so you ask. Four in five times that will get a long drawn out story about some shit you didn't expect nor did you really want to know. One in five times you get suprised with awesomeness and that is worth the risk. Mostly. My family is larger than my bloodline might have you think and my past is littered with judgements from inside and outside of that family, but I am ever impressed by my parents ability to give their children the best tools to survive the choppy waters and hard questions and looks from those without the sense to see past their skin and our burnt sienna crayons.
About a year maybe two, before she died, my Grandmother and I were discussing a news story about a lesbian couple in wich the Butch or more masculine of the couple was carrying their child because hir partner could not. To me this was the ultimate act of love and a beautiful selfless thing. To my Grandmother this was, at best, an abomination. In a heated arguement with a dying woman I quickly realized how hard my parents must have had it and how fortunate my sibling and I had been to even be alive. She said with the disapproving tone and I quote, " The poor children".Her stance (summerized) was that the parents would be different and so the children would be different and their lives would all be hell. She felt this was fine for the parents but they should not bring children into a world they could not assimilate to.  At wich point I lost it. Yes, with an elderly dying woman, I lost my shit and soon uncovered a truth I spent my life choosing to bury in the arsenal of dirt I knew about my Grandmother. "Grandmother, I am the children of differentMy life is not hell, hard at times but that has made me stronger. There is nothing wrong with different, my life is not hell, hard at times but that has made me stronger. There is nothing wrong with different, I am different, I am proud of that and what you're saying is that my parents should not have had us..." 

How much deeper and farther that conversation cut is between me and a dead women but the point is my parents love eachother just as that couple loved eachother. As one of three products of that love I will always be thankful that my parents dared to be different, before it was commonplace, before it didn't matter so much. Love is not an easy thing under the best of circumstances, it doesn't bend to appease the masses or adjust for optimal comfort, but it does give us the chance to grow and learn and become better with the help of a good partner.

I am black and I am white, I was not stolen or adopted, I am weird, I am different and my mommy and daddy love the hell out of me and I them. Happy 32nd Anniversary to the white lady and black guy also known as Mothadear and Papabear that made me. Thanks for turning out ok.